The International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan has sought arrest warrants for the Taliban's supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, and Afghanistan’s interim Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani.

Khan said on Thursday that his office filed two applications for warrants of arrest before Pre-Trial Chamber II of the ICC over the situation in the war-torn nation.

“My office has been independently and impartially examining alleged crimes committed against Afghan civilians” since the Pre-Trial Chamber allowed the investigation in October 2022, Khan said in a statement.

He said ICC’s Afghanistan Unified Team probing the situation is led by Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan.

Khan noted that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Akhundzada and Haqqani “bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds, under article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute.”

'Criminally responsible'

“My office has concluded that these two Afghan nationals are criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women, as well as persons whom the Taliban perceived as not conforming with their ideological expectations of gender identity or expression, and persons whom the Taliban perceived as allies of girls and women. This persecution was committed from at least 15 August 2021 until the present day, across the territory of Afghanistan,” he added.

Taliban returned to power in Kabul in August 2021 after the ouster of foreign forces from the war-torn nation. The interim administration in the nation has barred girls from pursuing education beyond the sixth grade.

The "Taliban’s interpretation of Sharia should not, and may not be used to justify the deprivation of fundamental human rights or the related commission of Rome Statute crimes," Khan said.